Showing titles in Educators

A memoir of race, inequality and the power of literature told through the life-changing friendship between an idealistic young teacher and her gifted student who was jailed for murder in the Mississippi Delta. As a young English teacher keen to make a difference in the world, Michelle Kuo took a job at a tough school in the Mississippi Delta, sharing books and poetry with a young African American teenager named Patrick and his classmates. For the first time, these kids began to engage with ideas and dreams beyond their town....

"A truly touching work." This is the poignant story of a young girl, Arlaana Black, who grew up with a congenital heart problem in a family who loved her but were limited by a number of difficulties, including mental illnesses and early onset dementia. Her alienation and trauma were so profound that throughout her childhood she suffered from periods of feeling suffocated. Resolved to become happy and understood, she was ultimately transformed by her practice of Buddhism. As a result, Arlaana not only learned how to properly breathe but also found herself in the most unusual of circumstances...

Born into slavery, Booker Washington suddenly gained his freedom after the American Civil War. This is a firsthand account from a slave around the events of the Emancipation Proclamation. The book covers the inspiring story of a young man as he works to rise up from being enslaved as a child, overcoming massive obstacles to obtain an education, to eventually become an advisor to the president. A truly inspiring and informative story.

In an effort to increase Romania’s population, the communist dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, authorized Decree 770 in 1967 that criminalized contraception and abortion. Abandoned and unwanted by their parents, thousands of children ended up in state orphanages where they were neglected and abused, and later became homeless on the streets of Bucharest.

I traveled from Washington to California when I was 18 years old to receive missionary training. What I found when I arrived here was a handsome young man that wanted to date me. He was John Hargrove, a brilliant student of the Bible. We saw each other daily and fell in love. Two and a half months later, we married and stayed together for 58 years until he passed away. The best thing he gave me were five wonderful children. This is his story.

After his long and successful career as a coach and a high school administrator, Mark Hugentobler was “sentenced” to prison by his local school board. He became academy principal within the Central Utah Correctional Facility in Gunnison, Utah. Arriving at the “Island of Misfit Toys” he soon recognized that his perceptions of the prison system were completely inaccurate. He found a world without hope. He came to realize that the Department of Corrections was not, as most people think, doing all they could to help “correct” inmates.

In the summer of 2014, Firas Jumaah was working diligently to complete his doctorate in chemistry at Lund University in Sweden when he suddenly received news that an ISIS advance in northern Iraq threatened the lives of his wife and children. As the situation worsened by the minute, Firas managed to send a message to his professor, Charlotta Turner, to let her know that he did not expect to return to Sweden to complete his dissertation. She quickly organized a commando mission that resulted in the dramatic rescue of Firas from war-torn Iraq.

An important part of the education of a researcher is to better know the scholars who have informed your own work. A giant to those in the field of English Education is Louise M. Rosenblatt. Her Reader Response Theory, Transactional Analysis and contributions to the understanding of Reading Theory and the Teaching of Literature cannot be overstated. This Scholar Study will provide an overview of the choice of this scholar, details of the education and significant contributions of this scholar, notable publications and, in addition, reflections and implications for my own work going forward.

Love and Fear — to own one is to own (have) the other, for both are found in the same entity. How would I, as Danny the child, and I, as Abe the teacher, run to and not from my Fear-to-Love? Perplexed, life throws me into this conundrum. So, teacher, love me for I am afraid.

Imagine finding out that you had been brainwashed into believing you were helping people, but you were actually hurting them. For years, Nehemiah Flynt provided therapeutic foster care without realizing the harm he was helping the government inflict on innocent children and families. By the grace of God, the blinders fell off and he began to see the wickedness of "the system."

Preeti was barely six years old when doctors diagnosed her deteriorating vision as a condition due to optic atrophy. Those were difficult days but with the support and encouragement of her parents she learnt to get the best out of her disability. She looked for possibilities, focused on every positive she could dream of, always playing her best shot at facing challenges and failures with dignity and without shame.

In The Making of Her, Clarissa Farr shares the wealth of her extensive experience to explore key questions facing parents, teachers, business leaders and managers everywhere. What contributes to the success of women? How can we inspire confidence, and nurture excellence in children - girls especially - that will equip them for adult life? Drawing on her time as high mistress of St Paul’s Girls’ School, one of the most successful schools of the country, Clarissa reflects on her experience of working as a key figure in the UK’s education system.

Cretin High School, located in Saint Paul, Minnesota, was a Catholic, all-male, military academy that brought unique twists to the already difficult high school experience. Cretin Boys, as they were called, were subject to the oppression of both church and state as they navigated the diverse teaching styles of Christian Brothers, military instructors, and lay teachers. Cretin Boy looks at those menial first jobs, takes you dancing with a girl at that first high school formal, and peels down the street in a Corvette-on-loan with a teen at the wheel.

Ten teachers recount what it’s like to be a first-year teacher in America’s classrooms.

A third memoir from the author of the huge international best sellers Angela’s Ashes and ‘Tis. In Teacher Man, Frank McCourt reads his own account of his illustrious, amusing, and sometimes rather bumpy long years as an English teacher in the public high schools of New York City.

As a retired high school English teacher and boys’ basketball coach of 38 years, Tom Lowery has helped thousands of students negotiate the ups and downs of high school life. During that time, he noticed many of the challenges they faced weren’t all that different from the ones he had to face growing up: things like relationships, the battle for good grades, and the wins and losses of the sports world. Tom began to ask himself why students nowadays are unable to handle life’s stressors.

The story of Musahib Ud-Din Khan is not a run of the mill tale of rags to riches. It is rather an inspirational narrative about the potential of education as a vehicle for upward mobility and for realization of individual potential in the face of poverty and adversity. The success of Professor Khan as a scholar and contributor to nation building is worth listening to. He lived, struggled and triumphed in a very difficult time in a newly minted postcolonial nation of Pakistan strapped for resources and opportunities.

How does a poor, Hispanic girl living in the projects of New Mexico grow up to work on Capitol Hill, meet a U.S. President, and become a state James Madison Fellow? Idell Koury can tell you how—through the grace of Jesus Christ. Idell, lovingly nicknamed ”I Baby” by her father, had an unstable childhood with a father who would disappear for longs periods of time and a mother whose methods of coping to deal with her painful past were the only way she knew to deal with her pain. But God had His hand on her whether she was in foster care or seeking refuge in one of her half-sibling’s ...

The stories in this book are all of real encounters, ranging from backstage encounters in universities that reveal the social world of academe to lessons learned from anxiety-ridden sororities girls to a transforming encounter with a Black man who grew from a child working at jobs such as a chicken-catcher at nights to support his family and became successful and wealthy to the point that he was able to buy the movie theater that forced him to sit in the balcony when he was young.

A former carer, primary school teacher and education researcher, Matt Lloyd-Rose became a volunteer police officer to try to understand the challenges facing young people in Brixton, the place he lived and taught. He got more than he bargained for. Each Friday evening, he put on the uniform and policed South London: racing through it on blue lights, patrolling its streets, entering a parallel version of a place he thought he knew.